Horse power, why do we need so much?

[festive]

Many (maybe even most) of us don't actually 'need' cars with very powerful engines and rarely use them in the capacity in which they were designed. I'm nearing 50 my first car was an old 1.3 Cortina, goodness knows what BHP it was actually putting out. Underpowered but still got me from A to B. My first powerful car was a Cavalier GSi 150BHP (quite a lot in the early 90s), then more recently I've had Seat Leon diesels around the same power. Did I actually need cars with that amount of power, including the one I own now? Probably not. They do however come into their own when overtaking and/or cruising on the motorway, or when having some (legal) fun on twisty B roads The high majority of my driving is now town based. When I eventually change my current car, the logical thing will be to go for a smaller engine lower BHP model. Whether I will or not remains to be seen!

If we're being honest, most of these powerful cars only get to 'go fast' from a junction/set of lights to the next junction/set of lights, and even then only up to the speed limit for that road assuming you're a law abiding citizen. So what's the point. And with more and more pedestrianisation, 20 zones etc, surely the need for massive engines will only decrease?

Also, and yes I know they're produced to be enticing, many cars ads to this day still make me laugh. Showing the car driving around deserted streets ... yeah cause that's the driving experience most of us have on a daily basis

Sorry if I went a bit off topic!

I would hazard a guess your cortina 1.3 was pushing out about 65bhp or there abouts. IIRC a decent 2.0pinto was good for 100bhp, or so round that time. I stand to be corrected of course.

Horsepower i think is not the whole picture right, its all about power to weight. My first bike had 107bhp but of course weighed a fraction of car and wow that was fun. Ive had an absolute blast in a highly tuned Elise S1 with half the power of one of my more recent cars and was twice as quick. For me it's the 0-80 buzz used to be way beyond that but im more sensible now, and if i want to take my life and noone else with me do that on a race track.

Problem is you get bored and used to it easily, i used to dabble years ago tuning an old cosworth from standard to way over twice it's original output and still wanted more.

 

[ericmark]

Pinto was a car and an engine, around the first small car introduced in USA seem to remember tenancy to burst into flames with a rear end shunt. Engine output 54 - 205 HP. I remember the formula 2πNT/33,000 with the hydrolytic dynamometer one did so many calculations to get the graph you got to learn the formula, no excel back then.

 

[Burnerman]

Lots of horsepower is a bad thing indeed when in the hands of the inexperienced, but every time I drive a 'cooking' motor of say up to 1200cc I find myself saying this car is so slow its practically unsafe - especially when you have book an appointment to overtake
Great to have plenty of power on tap, but don't tell that to young male drivers with 5 days driving experience!
John

 

[ericmark]

I blame the tractors, when I was a lad an agricultural tractor had a speed limit of 18 MPH by law, and a weekly mileage limit of 25 miles, so slow enough to overtake, and if you couldn't over take it would not be going far, today tractors are doing up to 50 MPH so harder to overtake and it seems no distance limit you can be behind one for 10 miles.

 

[Burnerman]

For sure, these Fasttrack machines can sure belt along but I didn’t realise they could see 50 mph!
At least, farm machinery does seem to have working lights these days -at least to an extent- and revolving yellow beacons is a legal requirement on some roads which is a huge improvement from a few years ago.
Unfortunately this doesn’t always apply to the trailers which often obscure the rig anyhow
John

 

[ericmark]

The JCB Fasttrack was used to push start the JCB Max at 50 MPH at which point the driver could drop the clutch on the JCB Max and used the two JCB engines tuned up to raise output from around 130 BHP to 750 BHP each which propelled the car to 350 MPH getting the land speed record for a diesel driven car. So yes it has been proved a JCB can do 350 MPH.

The engine cooling was with ice, which needed changing at end of each run, and he only used 650 BHP from each engine, he was told not to exceed 350 MPH as they had not been able to test tyres over that speed, they used the same tyre test rig as used for space shuttle. The car was to show the world how good the new JCB engine was when they stopped using Perkins after Perkins became Cat.

 

[mointainwalker]

I blame the tractors, when I was a lad an agricultural tractor had a speed limit of 18 MPH by law, and a weekly mileage limit of 25 miles, .

I think that was when un-taxed tractors were allowed for "local" field-to-field journeys.

 

[Burnerman]

I’m pretty sure in England tractors are tax exempt unless they run on turf tyres, and certainly they use red diesel.....not a bad deal!
John

 

[empip]

Here is an example of power misuse by a brain dead nuking funt !! See the short dashcam film - well done lorry driver Paul.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-50102838

Note, no mention of double continuous white lines and his disregard for them.
-0-

 

[Avocet]

That is shocking, indeed. Poor thing. - and the unborn child. I don't understand the article though, it says she was "struck from behind" but also says she was "thrown from her vehicle"? I'm guessing she'd taken her seat belt off because it was uncomfortable at that stage?

I did once see a pregnant woman run over. That was horrible. Not so much speed, but a car overtaking on a blind crest. It was urban dual carriageway with a 40 limit and the driver was overtaking another car coming up to the crest, while she had started crossing the road, just on the other side of the crest. She went a long way up in the air. It was a long time before mobile phones (early 1980s), so I ran into the nearest public building and called from there. I never found out what happened to her, or the child though.

 

[ericmark]

To travel 28 miles Caernarfon to Porthmadog and back by train takes around 3 hours, there is a speed limit of 15 MPH, and people still use the train, or would do if still open and not closed by Covid 19, same where I live Llanfair to Welshpool 8 miles, takes 50 minutes, and I bought what has turned out to be a useless season ticket, as some one has decided we can't get off the train at Welshpool again due to Covid 19, but in other years I prefer to walk down to station and trundle off to Welshpool to catch the bus as more pleasant travelling at low speed.

But if I ambled along the road at 15 MPH it would be dangerous for both me and other traffic, and I have seen this first hand when using my bike. The biggest danger is the armourco barriers which are so unforgiving if one is trapped between on and another vehicle, I think unless there is a safe route for cyclist and pedestrian behind the barriers they should be banned.

 

[Brigadier]

To travel 28 miles Caernarfon to Porthmadog and back by train takes around 3 hours, there is a speed limit of 15 MPH, and people still use the train, or would do if still open and not closed by Covid 19, same where I live Llanfair to Welshpool 8 miles, takes 50 minutes, and I bought what has turned out to be a useless season ticket, as some one has decided we can't get off the train at Welshpool again due to Covid 19, but in other years I prefer to walk down to station and trundle off to Welshpool to catch the bus as more pleasant travelling at low speed.

But if I ambled along the road at 15 MPH it would be dangerous for both me and other traffic, and I have seen this first hand when using my bike. The biggest danger is the armourco barriers which are so unforgiving if one is trapped between on and another vehicle, I think unless there is a safe route for cyclist and pedestrian behind the barriers they should be banned.

A lad who used to work at our place was a keen cyclist.
He fell off while riding on a armco stretch of road.
As he fell, he naturally put his arm out to break his fall.
Unfortunately, he put his arm over the armco as he went down.
The armco (or the vertical stanchions that it is bolted to) cut through the inside upper arm, and almost severed it.
He has pretty-reduced function in that arm now.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Here's the future:

 

[ericmark]

I would not worry about the 26 MPH it is a lot faster than the 16 MPH allowed for an ebike, and it is 8 miles to the local town so 43 miles ample, over that would not want to use one. But not sure how other road users would see it, when I am doing 26 MPH on a 60 MPH road? I would actually be going slower than the tractors around here.

 

[cdbe]

I could do with a bit more HP (or is it torque?). We have a VW Touran 7 seater and a 1.2 tonne caravan. It's a 1.9 diesel with 105ps, (unfortunately the well renouned 130ps version fitted to most VAG cars at the time was never an option). It struggles a bit with uphill stretches of motorway and dual carriageway. I am considering a remap or tuning box but not until we've eked a few more miles out of the slightly juddery clutch and dual mass.